10-Neon, checking in

[10-Neon]

Pardon typos, I hate laptop keyboards, and I am in a hurry.

I thought wouldn't have access to a computer, but I ran into some laptops with a free internet connections outside the room they do panels in. I am skippin the art panel to eat and get some stuff out. They undoubtedly have announced all of the cool new Terran stuff by now, Iwon't even touch it until I've seen it myself. What I will (interrupt, Tym, from here, just came up and talked to me.) talk about is stuff you won't hear anywhere else. In the line to my first shot at SC2, (it wrapped all the way around the section) one of the developers came up and talked to us line-waiters. I was only able to ask two(well, one and a half) questions (the other guys were hogging him) but let's see how you like the answers. The first thing I asked, it was actually clarifying someone else's question, was about Team Melee, etc, where multiple players control a base. He said that, while they had no reason not to include it, he didn't see it being a major part of the game. The next thing was about the Soul Hunter: I asked about why it was removed. His answer was that the Soul Hunter was intended as an intermediate unit between the Stalker and the Immortal. It was supposed to, originally, suck up the souls of dying Zealots (friendly Zealots, not enemies) but testers complained that it meant that players would make Zealots just to get them killed. So they changd it to suck up enemy souls, where it proceeded to become and overpowered unit that people would use exclusively. At that point it got the axe.

I have a lot more stuff, related to gameplay and whatnot, that i will post later. I have several pages of it, and don't think I have time to post it now. I will note that, when you get past the controls (they keyboard was different from what I knew, some hotkeys changed) and the tech tree (f12 opens the whoing the tech tree, though I didn't use it much), the game plays...feels, exactly like the original game. Graphics? if you have time to worry, you're probably losing!

I'll try to check in as often as possiblebetween panels. I will probably get several more hours of play before the convention ends, and I promise to give you every little juicy detail that I can possibly find.

[burkid]

youre alive! glad to hear from one of our own. thanks for the update, i was actually wondering about the soul hunter myself.

[Outcaster]

nicely done, keep it up with more insight :)

[FlyingTiger]

nice man keep up the good work ^_^

[generalrievous]

you have done well

[Fenix]

We are pleased you 10-Neon. Continue to please us, and you will take your place among the Pantheon of of Awesomeness.

[kuvasz]

I hope you have pen, paper, dictaphone, whatever at hand! Thanks for keeping us unlucky ones updated.

[MarineCorp]

Hurray 10-Neon thank you for the post and nice questions you asked there and i was wondering why Soul Hunters were scrapped.

PS: what was the Blizzcon like??

[Ych9]

Very nice. Keep it up :good:

[DontHate]

awesome, very nice.

[GuiMontag]

they announced the WOW expansion..

[Remy]

We love ya 10-Neone.  Have a great time there.  Write home often.  You will come back to us won't you?  Neon?  Nee-nee? :upset:

[Fenix]

Pff, I liked the RPGs back when they were pencil, paper, and a d12.....Sigh....The good ol' days....

WoW isn't a game, it's crack in electronic form.

[Remy]

So you noticed Markus, I must get rid of the evidence.

Umm... why don't you come take a walk with me Markus. Oh what, this alley? Oh no, don't worry about it, it's just a little dark. Come right in...

[Fenix]

......Ew......

[Fenix]

I'm just that good
*WINK*

[Tym29]

Wow, so I just finished my first 6 hours day SC2 with only occasional breaks to return to the line to wait for the next scrimmage and food. The multiplayer game play is pretty familiar even some of the buildings are similar enough to recognize. The game plays very much like SC1, but a few new units and of course awesome new eye candy. The environments are so gorgeous its kind of distracting but nice. Its still very much like a “more pretty” version of the same game. The two races are very well balanced. The AI for the units still sucks balls. My colossus’ can walk over cliffs etc but get confused around proton cannons and just walk in circles. Not cool but funny. Oh and the colossus’ is awesomely powerful. Walking that into a terran supply chain is a thing of wonder. The scvs just melt away. The terran turrets respond to the colossus as an air unit and fire on them which I found interesting. They are however extremely vulnerable to air attack which terran have in the bag from early in the game with the Viking, another of my new favorite units. So balance is maintained.
Each game was limited to 20 minutes to decimate the opposing two players completely. Not an easy task. So getting to a mothership in the tech tree wasn’t an easy task. But wow what a let down. The Mothership just blow up after it got hit a few times I’m sure like with the carrier fleet its upgrades make a bit difference but I was under impressed after the huge cost and extensive tech investment. Which was also my impression of the Thor. Its very cool looking on the battle field and very scary to see 5 of those coming up your ramp but a few zelots and a couple of handfuls of warp orbs make short work of the whole lot very quickly. And a few Vikings can make a pile of rubble out of the Mothership.

[Tym29]

They laughed when someone asked that and said that it could SC2 or  WOW…the… expansion whatever (I don’t play WOW ) Which ever reaches Beta first. So even they didn’t know which it was for.

edit "Wrath of the Lich King"

[Outcaster]

Oh... MY... GOD.......

If it is for WoW, that is stupid,I hate that game with passion now!

Well then express your wrath :))

[Tym29]

aw just use the psionic blade...

[10-Neon]

I am finding that I am really terrible with Terran, my Protoss isn't too bad, though. I have still not built a single Mothership or Thor... han't even touched the Carriers(not called Tempests anymore, have Interceptors) an or Battlecruisers either. I've been hanging out on the lower tech tree. I've been able to address all of the non-Zerg relaed questions so far, however I am sure you have too, since a lot was covered in the Terran announcement.

[Remy]

It's great to hear from you guys 10-Neon and Tym29. We thank you for working like busy little bees to get info and insight for us, but still don't forget to have fun.

When BlizzCon comes to its end and they're about to shut the doors, do feel free to grab one of the SC devs and forcefully extract info on Zerg. Make sure it's right at the end when it doesn't matter if you get kicked out. If the bastard won't budge and you run out of time just bring him back and we'll question him here.


Remy, your power level is higher than admin. You should take over ;D


Ummm... no, a big NO at that. That is only because our admin does a lot of work behind the scenes. If he actively participated in discussions he would slap me silly with power levels, but then we also we not have such a dedicated admin doing such a kickass admin work.

I wish everyone would appreciate the good work the Admin is doing, even if you can't really tell what he's doing right away. He is always working while unseen, many times even if he isn't logged on he's still working to improve this site for everyone. Kindly give him props when you see him around.

[ArchLimit]

@Remy. Agreed. Major props to the Admin. This is an amazing site and very well managed. I just gave my last powerup to Ych9 though, lol. So for the Admin, here is a nice big sweaty *PROPS!*

[Fenix]

nice big sweaty *PROPS!*


......Ew......

But yeah, the admin rulez.....Made this the best forum.....Like, in the history of forum.....It totally pwns the Romans.

[burkid]

wow fenix. i lol'd.

:powerup: to our admin, the best out there!

[Tym29]

Neon it was great to see you at the event. It’s a shame we didn’t take the chance play a round or two. I found I liked the Protoss more as well, but they’ve always been my favorite. The terran tech tree just seemed too convoluted. I got a chance to team up with some very awesome players the second day. Its amazing the strategies you can come up with when the pressure is really on. I ended up playing Protoss almost exclusively.

Props to the admin for a great weekend!

[Tym29]

maybe he needed to sleep off all the excitement. It was a good event with loads to see thouhg i didn't spend much time out of the SC2 pin. I think he was looking at a long flight home so maybe hes a little jetlagged :sleeping:

[10-Neon]

I reported once on the second day too, on this thread. It was short though because I was more pressed for time than the first time.

I agree with Tym on pretty much everything. My first impression of the Terran tech tree was that it was about 2x more complected than the Protoss.

I have quite a lot of pages worth of impressions to post, but I've seen that most of what I've observed has already been covered.

I'll give that update a dedicated thread, because there will be a lot of it, and there will be some photos too.

[Ryno]

Man, what I would do for the demo of this game...

[Tym29]

I keep thinking the same thing im not sure I can hold out a few more years :-\

[10-Neon]

I've been waiting for Spore since it was announced. You just go numb after a while, or literally go insane with the constant anticipation. I'd chose the numbness route, because they might not let you play StarCraft II from a mental institution.

[Ryno]

oh man Spore is another epic game im waiting for but after it was announced and there was that 30 min video explaining it, i havent heard much since...